1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to product quality safety, and more specifically, to a method and apparatus for tracing product quality.
2. Description of the Related Art
Product quality safety incidents frequently occurred recently, such as, enterobacter sakazakii in baby milk powder, melamine-tainted toxic milk powder, and global car recall events. Emergency response to product quality safety events needs to establish a rapid reaction mechanism of product quality safety for rapidly locating sources of raw materials that do not comply with product quality requirements, to prevent further development of those incidents and additional losses.
Existing measures of emergency response to product quality safety events often realize location through defective product inspection after the occurrence of incidents, for example, 1) through directly inspecting raw materials, which might not be easily available due to raw material depletion or difficulty in storage; 2) through establishing a tracing network of product quality. Through recording product information in each stage of production, fabrication, storage, transportation, and distribution, tracing product quality establishes a tracing network of information flow from raw materials to finished products. With inference based on the product tracing network, it is possible to determine the probabilities of unqualified raw materials, other than directly determining what raw materials are unqualified. Taking toxic milk powder as an example, since raw milk materials from many milk stations are fixed in a dairy plant, it is difficult to trace to the sources of raw milk materials that incur quality safety incidents.
A key point of establishing a product quality rapid reaction mechanism is to find out the source of product quality safety incidents. Therefore, there is a need for a method for rapidly and accurately locating the source of product raw materials causing product quality safety incidents.